Dragon Age The Joyguard (formerly Hype Train) [Spoilers]

oof, I was 100% with you until you got to the bolded part... 

Uhm, thank you and... sorry? I don't mean to come across all snooty and pretending that I know more than anyone else. It's just that the topic is very, very dark and I want to be totally clear about what I'm arguing.

And I also find it a really interesting dilemma.

People seriously can't be allowed to get it into their heads that they can go around making decisions that could kill others just because they think it's a good idea, obviously, because that would be disastrous for everyone. Complete madness. And at the same time, in those rare cases where a horrific choice is truly unavoidable, it's insanely important for people to at least consider 'the utilitarian point of view' as you call it. At least, if they care about people not suffering unnecessarily.

Again, one of the things I like about Solas. He kind of embodies that question. It was also one of the things I liked about ME3's ending. There isn't a choice that I can't imagine having absolutely catastrophic consequences for the sentient species:

*Destruction would disrupt transportation throughout the galaxy, and all kinds of indispensable technology. Trillions upon trillions dead in a year, easy.

*Control will eventually cause disaster when the no-longer-human Shepard finally takes offense to the behavior of the galaxy's denizens and decides to 'take direct control' through his/her Reapers, or is used strategically against rivaling and Reaper-less foreign powers, or just goes insane, or is defeated by a superior power and replaced by the same old cycle.

*Symbiosis could easily mean that the organic species simply lose their fragile and hard-won sentience. The Catalyst isn't an organic creature and has no idea what true sentience feels like, how would it know how to preserve it while turning people into half-machines? How would Shepard? All life in the galaxy, snuffed out in an instant to be replaced by fleshy constructs just going through the motions without actually feeling their own existence. Pretty much the worst-case scenario.

And obviously, refusing to make a choice means that the Reapers go on as they have been.

Who the fuck is Shepard to make these choices for everyone else, knowing next to nothing about their ramifications, while barely being able to stand, let alone think?

And yet they must. There's nobody else to take responsibility. No chain of command to pass it up. Literally nothing to do except make a decision and accept the inevitable losses either way, and hope they did the least terrible thing. 


I didn't say he couldn't be considered awful. Just that that's not really a useful or meaningful observation to make unless you're trying to set someone straight who were as of yet undecided about the pros and cons of murdering families, and were considering following Solas' example and destroying the world for that reason.

Anything else, and you have to go just a little deeper than that. That's all I was saying.

Someone less familiar with your snap judgements might choose to take offense at that statement. 

As usual, it was a fun debate while it lasted. Thank you for taking the time.


Modern mages almost broke the world after just a few thousand years, their artifacts are still extremely dangerous, and our solution to that so far has been just hoping that the right hero is in the right place at the right time to stop each escalating catastrophe. 

And for all we know, Solas does have solutions. He certainly implies as much.

But yeah. His plans are clearly boding very very ill for everyone in Thedas, even if he succeeds in the best possible way. As I said, knife in the kidney ASAP.

Hi everyone,

It's time for the "Is Solas racist?" - or whatever the topic was - to either end or have its own thread created, thanks.

While real world political discussion isn't allowed here, there is room for discussion of such issues within the context of the fictional world of Dragon Age.

From the rules;



There's just no space for such a conversation in a thread for people who're excited about Dragon Age 4.

Further posts on this topic after this one will be removed. If people really wish to continue it, start a thread, tag me and I'll move the relevant posts over to the new thread.

Thanks.

To me, the primary difference between Solas and Corypheus is that Solas can point to flaws in the world that actually... y’know... matter. Loss of immortality, spirits going haywire, the Blight. Things that cause suffering in people, rather than things that cause “suffering” to abstract concepts. He does invoke abstract concepts, but he anchors those concepts in how they affect people. Typically a specific group of people — elves — but at least he has the capacity to consider some people.

Meanwhile, pre-Blight Corypheus lived a life so far removed from (personal) suffering that he’s fundamentally unfocused. He can only fight for abstract concepts like “Tevinter’s glory” and “the Black City should not be empty”, but they’re completely unmoored from reality. Even in the Bad Future, he doesn’t seem to have an actual agenda. He doesn’t know how to follow through because he has no concept of why people fight for things in the first place.

Pardon me if I've misinterpreted your postings here, but I get the distinct impression that you'd find the continued existence of these ostensibly highly-evolved and powerful beings to be preferable to the continued existence of the current mortal populations of humans, elves, dwarves, qunari.

And I can't help but wonder: Okay, so what's next?

If potential is a consideration, I would suggest the existing mortals may actually have more potential than the immortals. The immortals have perhaps already reached the very pinnacle of their evolutionary potential, and there's nowhere else for them to go unless/until they start the decline into entropy. The current mortals still have vast potential before them and may evolve in different, possibly better ways - especially since they include different races whereas the immortals are all of elven origin.

It's also a value judgement, determining that immortality and whatever other power they possess are desirable characteristics. If a world is already filled with immortals, there's not much room for new people to come into existence. Such a world would become stale and stagnant.

Just a thought...

Overall? I've no idea. We'd need to learn a lot more about the Ancient Elves for me to be anywhere near comfortable saying that they objectively have a greater claim to life to the point where the Thedasians' destruction is outright preferable.

Mind you, that is possible. It's entirely plausible for these creatures to be so much more and better than 'us' that every second 'we' live instead of them is an enormous injustice, objectively. Maybe not likely, based on what we've heard about their attitudes. But it could happen. Which, again, wouldn't necessarily mean that 'we' didn't still have the right to defend our own existence.

Mostly, what I'm saying is that I have a hard time blaming Solas for thinking that he's doing the right thing. If you traveled forward in time to a point where all human beings only lived for a few days individually, and were mostly insensate, and could barely have functioning societies, and you could turn it all back to normal but it would require the sacrifice of a certain number of these poor and pathetic wannabe-humans...? 

I mean, that's not a no-brainer. At least not if you care about people in the slightest. 

The problem is that Solas knows a lot more than we do about what's really at stake, and what the ramifications of his plans really are for the sentient 'races' of Thedas. So it's difficult to have the conversation.

And honestly, the people of Thedas are living on borrowed time anyway. In a thousand years, they've had no less than six near-apocalypses, two of them in the past twenty years, the last only narrowly averted by chance more than anything else.

I get what you're saying about the potential downsides of societies of immortals, but I have a hard time seeing that they seriously outweigh people having an infinity in which to grow and love and live and learn. And the humans, dwarves and elves quite simply won't exist long enough to make it much further than they already have. Not if history is an indicator.


...So the human that would become Corypheus did what he did because fear of his waning influence and power drove him to it, and when he reached the Golden Throne he decided that since there wasn't a God he might as well play the part himself.

Exactly how is this evidence that he wasn't a megalomaniac grasping for personal power, heedless of the risks? I never denied that he could have had a wife and a sense of humor once upon a time, but those don't seem to factor into his actions at all.

I understand what you're saying about Solas here, and it fits with his own descriptions of himself as a brash and fiery young warmonger on a crusade, but the fact that Mythal's death was what first moved him to action against the Evanuris just isn't strong evidence that his much later raising of the Veil was also done more for that reason than to try to save his people from the escalating disaster. Which is specifically the point you compared him and Corypheus on, and the idea I'm responding to.

I think it's definitely a fair argument. The fact that the world has nearly ended six times in a thousand years is a real historical fact to the denizens of this world, as is the fact that these catastrophes seem to be occurring more frequently in recent years. We know why, obviously, in a meta-sense, but they don't. They have to think realistically about their chances to make it another thousand years in the light of that when making their decisions. It's their lives, and their children's children's on the line. And it doesn't look good. 

I agree with you that people probably won't be dealing optimally with immortality, I'm not putting the concept on a pedestal. But it's still immortality. No amount of boredom or wasted time literally outweighs death. I certainly haven't lived my life with perfect efficiency, but I still wouldn't ask to have my remaining lifespan cut in half just to force myself to get going. Would you?

And just like there's no guarantee that a shorter lifespan means more productivity, immortality doesn't have to mean stagnation either. Especially not because you do have forever to try to optimize your way of living. Using your time more effectively is absolutely something that can be learned, whereas living forever is rather harder to just... figure out.

Frankly, 'work to develop healthier and more rewarding attitudes about our immortality' seems like a much more hopeful and useful thing for a society to work towards than 'accept that we're all collectively going to die, and try to get something done before it happens.'

The best part of immortality is that the chances of any major calamity that can befall an individual goes up exponentially. You’re gonna stub that toe a billion times over, break every bone and contract every disease to plague whatever region you live in, on top of your mind eventually purging older knowledge as your brain runs out of space to retain it. It sounds like a blast.

Every major calamity and every major success. Plus everyone in the population benefits from planning for the long term, which aligns incentives across generations in a way that they aren’t aligned in the real world.

Maybe it’s just me, but I’m deeply suspicious of how fictional narratives always say “oh, immortality wouldn’t actually be that great because of X, Y, and Z.” To me, it sounds like sour grapes. A way of making us feel ok about the A through W reasons why mortality sucks.

And maybe that’s necessary sometimes. Sometimes, we need that comfort to keep going in a world where death isn’t anywhere close to being beaten. But sometimes, I think we should feel a little uncomfortable with the way things are.

In summary, if I had a way to climb into heaven and kill Death, I would absolutely do it. I don’t care if it’s hubris, I am shanking that motherfucker with a magic blade as I backflip into the stars.